What has four legs, looks like a bewildered ottoman, and fixes carbon like crazy!? A sheep of course! Why am I obsessed with sheep... and silly sheep jokes? Because sheep do so many amazing things! They produce meat, milk, clothing, mulch, beautiful skulls, pre-pelleted fertilizer, they control weeds, they have been scientifically proven to make people feel more peaceful, and more, all by just doing what they love; cruising the worlds pastures and rangelands in all kinds of weather, drinking water, and feasting on wide variety of vegetation! I wish I could be that cool, but for now I'll just have to settle with being these cool animals' shepherdess... Because the animals we are lucky to be around are...
Expiration dates, proper cooking temps, and refrigeration are all tools we are probably using on a daily basis to keep our food "safe" for consumption right Jamie? Which of these are truly important and what are we missing? That's what I want to talk- well, actually, write- about in my next couple of emails. A photo from when I used to work at our local USDA Meat Processing Plant in Laramie, WY. It's sort of exhausting to keep up with all of the things we "must" do to "stay safe" when it comes to food, according to authorities. The list seems to get longer every day. I recently attended an online webinar about the PRIME Act, which is a proposed...
Does eating out or at someone else's house cause you anxiety? Cibophobia is the fear of food, and for me it always seems to strike at get-togethers with a meal involved. What a gesture it is, for our families and friends to offer to feed us! Food has always linked us together as a cultural glue, and to refuse to eat at a gathering would just come off as an insult, wouldn't it? So foregoing the meal or even worse, vocalizing your dietary restrictions, just makes you come of as a control freak... Neither of these seem like viable options without crumbling the very foundations of jovial family cordiality at annual get-togethers-to-come... BUT, you have worked so so so...
You have probably heard this statistic before... The average age of farmers and ranchers in the US is 65 and climbing. This means the art of farming and ranching is fading in our country, rather than being passed down to the next generation. Some of the biggest reasons for this trend are: -lack of access to productive land and water -lack of available capital it takes to start up a conventional food production operation -high risk associated with running an Agriculture-Based business This past week I had the unique opportunity to participate in a Land Access Summit to help lay the groundwork for a Beginning Farmer/Rancher Program on private land in Buffalo, Wyoming. My friend Caitlin Youngquist with UW Extension...
I heard the most interesting conversation on dairy products the other day on Science Friday on NPR. Did you know that 30-50 million Americans are lactose intolerant? Listen to this interview of the Associate Professor of Anthropology at Harvard, where she talks about how the ability to digest lactose could partially depend on your gut microbiome. Check it out HERE. I found this episode particularly relevant because my relationship with dairy has been long and winding... I found out that I was lactose intolerant when I went to college. I discovered, a few years later, that I could enjoy goat and sheep milk, as well as A2A2 cow milk sometimes, without the same consequences I experienced when I drank ultra-pasteurized, homogenized cow...
